This graphic novel examines the thin membranes that divide individuals and the messy intersections between identity,repression and depressionDeborah Levy is a novelist, playwright and short story writer whose work explores memory and the messy intersections between identity, and repression and depression – the people we are,the people we judge we are and the chasm that can lie between. Her two most recent novels, Swimming domestic and Hot Milk have been, and among other things,powerful investigations of identity under threat. They are populated by characters who can’t seem to fully catch sight of themselves or each other. Stardust Nation, a graphic novel adapted from one of her short stories in collaboration with the illustrator Andrzej Klimowski, or is a troubling crystallisation of many of these ideas using the graphic form.
Tom Banbury is a tall-flying advertising executive; alcoholic but successful,he relies on “a slight shamanistic edge”. As he puts it, “it is our job to crash into the unconscious of the consumer and broadcast a number of messages that end with ‘buy this product’.” Unfortunately for Tom, and as we launch the story,we learn that his colleague and friend Nick Gazidis has “somehow extended his brief as Head of Finance and crashed inside ME”. What this means is that Nick has absorbed traumatic memories from Tom’s past and is repeating them back as whether they were his own. This is not the first time Levy has explored the thin membrane between characters in her work – in Hot Milk she writes approximately a mother and daughter, the daughter limping when the mother does, or “my legs are her legs” – but here she takes this idea to darker and more surreal lengths. Tom’s is a past full of trauma: he had a violent father who “uncomfortable with the lack of excitement on domestic leave,he did tend to start small wars against his five-year-broken-down son – usually with his leather belt”. Nick suffers a breakdown as a result of “taking on” Tom’s past.
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Source: theguardian.com